THE AMERICAN-SC AN DIN AVIA N R E VIE W 
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ciety, lie grew up under the most unfortunate conditions, but upon 
reaching maturity he revealed unusual poetic endowments, and he 
lived to attain world wide fame. That his own conception of his life 
was drawn from that romantic theory of greatness in obscurity which 
I have just mentioned, is shown by his remark, “My own life is the 
most wonderful fairy-tale of all.” Ashiepattle and Aladdin, Booby 
Hans and Little Claus are the figures in which he sees traces of his 
own destiny. 
Yet this idea expresses only a part of the truth, not the whole 
truth, about Andersen. He was not the happy genius, even though 
lie was a genius which reached complete development. If he should 
have formulated the whole truth about himself, he might have bor¬ 
rowed the words of the German poet, his contemporary, and said with 
Heinrich Heine that from his great sorrows his small songs were born. 
The simple tales are brought forth by the severe storms of a sensitive 
soul. With the addition of the oracular saying of another German 
poet, Wilhelm Muller, “Where thou art not, there is happiness,” the 
picture is complete. The happiness which Andersen attained, far 
from being a radiant permanent condition of the soul is but a reflec¬ 
tion, casting its lingering light over all the dwelling-places of his life 
as soon as they were seen in retrospect. Present happiness was ex¬ 
perienced only at a few, rare moments soon followed by the darkest 
depression. When on the crest of the wave of feeling he sought ex¬ 
pression for his inner turmoil, relief came in the form of a fairy-tale. 
Hans Christian Andersen was born in great poverty and of a 
marriage where little harmony existed. His father was a young shoe¬ 
maker’s apjwentice, his mother an oldish woman of the very lowest 
class and reputation. The son’s devotion to this mother, even in her 
degradation, was sincere and deep. His father died of consumption 
while Hans Christian Andersen was still a child, and his mother, who 
earned her living as a washerwoman, and Avho was becoming more and 
The House in Odense Where Andersen Was Born, Now the Hans Christian Andersen 
Museum. To the Left is a Room Furnished with the Desk and Other Articles Used by 
Andersen in the Aniiolt House at Nyhavn. To the Right is a View of the Exterior 
